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You're not looking pert, the pair of you," said one of them. "Give me a cigar, if you've got one," said Devine. "Saunders will tell you about the thing. I've done quite enough talking for one night." Saunders told the story tersely, and afterward snapped the magazine of his rifle up and down with a dramatic gesture. "Held them off with that, and not a blame ca'tridge in the thing," he said.
Well, we'll try a little 'Pache persuadin'." And the renegade dragged his helpless captive up to the thorny sahuaro, and bound his back against it with the dead horse's bridle. McKee searched through Lane's pockets until he found a match. "Last one, hey? Kinder 'propriate. Las' drink from the old canteen, las' ca'tridge, last look at the scenery, and las' will an' testyment.
Wallie was now in the doorway and he could make out innumerable dark shapes browsing contentedly in his grain-field. "What'll we do?" he asked, despairingly. "Do?" replied Pinkey, savagely, tugging at his boot straps. "I'll send one whur the dogs won't bite him with every ca'tridge. We'll run a thousand dollars' worth of taller off the rest of 'em.
Some of the men were crying like children, some groaning pitifully, some laughing despite their wounds. I heard dialects peculiar to every part of England, and fragmentary accounts of hairbreadth escapes and desperate fighting. "They was a big Dutchman comin' at me from the other side. Lucky fer me that I 'ad a round in me breach. He'd 'a' got me if it 'adn't 'a' been fer that ca'tridge.
"Gal," he used the word as a polite form of address, the equivalent of the more sophisticated "lady," "ef ye will believe me, all my ammunition is spent. Not a ca'tridge lef', not a dust of powder." Meddy caught both her hands to her lips to intercept and smother a cry of dismay. "I snared a rabbit two days ago in a dead-fall.
"'No, they ain't; they've caught me at home as usual, says I. 'Well, I'll give that Eastern blossom an idea of the quality of this country anyhow. So I togs myself up in the awfullest rig I could find; strapped two ca'tridge belts to me, every hole filled, and a gun in every holster; put candle-grease on my mustache and twisted the ends up to my eye-winkers; stuck a knife in my hatband and another in my boot; threw a shotgun and a rifle in the buckboard, and pulled out quick through the colt-pens before Jonesy could get his peeps onto me.
What you want is a single-shot rifle, or a deer that will stand still." Saunders turned and pointed to the dismembered carcass that hung from a fir branch close at hand. "I got that one on the run, and there was a time when I'd have had one for every ca'tridge, instead of plugging Marlin bullets into trees. It was a sport I was meant for." He paused and sighed.
"It's sure a mean jack pot," said James. "It looks like they have it on us every way. The prospects for our emergin' winners ain't cheerin' none, but, gents, speakin' for myself alone, I wouldn't sell at no price. I'm aimin' to live where I be till you-alls beds me down for keeps. I reckon I'll stay with the game while I got a chaw and a ca'tridge left.
That little ca'tridge wasn't no good, an' I didn't intend to stand any more foolin'. We just rowed back to the other wreck, an' I called to the ba'try man to come down, an' bring some bigger ca'tridges with him, fur if we was goin' to do anything we might as well do it right. So he got down with a package of bigger ones, an' jumped into the boat.
Abandoned chiefly because the old miner who had lived there died one day, and left behind him all the marks of having died from starvation, mostly. A cursory examination of his few belongings had revealed much want, but no gold save a little coarse dust in a small bottle. "About enough to fill a rifle ca'tridge," detailed the teller of the tale.
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